Talk:Weapons/@comment-2001:982:A917:1:7180:64C3:16DE:E1BF-20190416185520
After the Plasma Overcharge, I wanted to check the Critical Damage component, but stumbled upon weirdness with respect to the Flamer weapons. As it is, they fire a beam towards the target, a beam that has a certain width and length. As such, it's the only weapon (besides the Missile Launcher) that can hit multiple targets with a single shot. But it does so according to a specific template, that seemed awkward at best. As such, I decided to sink my teeth into it and see if I could figure out how to discover the flame template actually works with respect to collateral damage. It took some time, but I've discovered how the template determines collateral damage to targets that are grazed by the flame beam. TL;DR: units have a hitbox, that rotates depending on the angle of the line of fire. The part that is covered by the beam in the case of collateral damage, is the part of the unit that gets damaged. TL;DR2: if you want to hit a Large Tyranid with a Flamer, hit it along the pure diagonal if you can, to maximize damage, as other angles see reduced damage as a result of hitbox weirdness. The long version: Basically, each unit has a hitbox, with a width and length of 0.7 times the width and length of the tile it is standing on (except Large Tyranids, I will come to those later). This hitbox is centered on the central point of the tile and with a width and length of 0.7, the hitbox is about half of the surface area of the tile in question. The fire beam has the exact same width, 0.7 times the width of a normal tile. Now when the game starts a shot with a Flamer, it will draw a line from the central point of the tile of the shooter towards the central point of the tile of the target (Large Tyranids excluded, more on that later), for a length equal to the weapon range (4 tiles for the tactical Flamers, 3 tiles for the Hand Flamers). It will also align the hitbox of the shooter and the target along this line, rotating it around the central point of the tile it is in, so that the beam fully covers the target hitbox in passing. Whenever the line of fire is aligned with the tile grid, or along the diagonals, any tiles within weapon range are exactly positioned in the fire beam and all take full damage. But when the beam is fired at a different angle, a number of tiles only suffer grazing shots. To determine the amount of damage those grazing shots do, the hitbox of the grazed tile is being aligned in the exact same direction as that of the shooter and the target, in the same direction as the line of fire, so rotated around its own tiles' central point, but with the same angle as the line of fire. The fire beam, with its 0.7 width will cover this hitbox partially. It's this partial coverage that determines how much damage the graze shot inflicts upon its target. Through simple trigoniometry, it's possible to determine the surface area of the partial coverage and it's the ratio of the partial cover with respect to the total surface area of the hitbox that is also the ratio of the damage received with respect to the damage of the Flamer in question. Now I've noticed that whenever a Flamer deals damage against multiple targets, they will all suffer the same relative amount of damage; units receiving full damage will all suffer the exact same amount of damage and units receiving partial grazing damage will receive part of that damage, based on the hit box ratio. As I said above, Large Tyranids have something different going for them: they all cover 4 tiles in a 2x2 pattern. From the pure diagonal, due to line of sight rules, the Space Marines only see 1 of those tiles and the beam will be directed towards the center of that tile. However, when the Space Marine has 2 of those tiles in line of sight - more is impossible, the other 2 tiles are considered to be behind the 2 he can see - the beam actually gets targeted towards the middle between the central points of the two tiles. As such, at maximum range, those 2 tiles will both suffer a grazing shot instead of a full hit! It gets even worse when the Space Marine gets closer, as the beam will then hit all 4 tiles of the Large Tyranid, but in most situations, those will all be hit as grazing shots - and thereby the damage against such Tyranids is (much) less than it should be. Only along the pure diagonal will a Space Marine deal full damage to the Tyranid, doubly so when the beam reaches the far end of the creature. Of course, you can try and remedy this by positioning another of your Space Marines such that you block line of sight towards 1 of those 2 tiles, so the beam gets aimed directly against the one that's still visible - and if the line of fire is aligned with the tile grid, you'll hit the tile behind it for full as well. Why they didn't simply redefine the hitbox for Large Tyranids is something I can't understand.